California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena near Los Angeles, is one of the premier research universities in the world.
Caltech's affiliation with the Summer Science Program dates to SSP's founding in 1958-9, with the enthusiastic support of Caltech's President at the time, Dr. Lee DuBridge.
He donated astronomical equipment and recruited Caltech faculty to teach at SSP and chair its Executive Committee. In fact, in the early years, Caltech served as the legal "parent" of SSP.

And the connection has continued in various ways ever since. Numerous Caltech faculty have lectured at SSP, including Astronomy Prof. Maarten Schmidt (33 times), Physics Prof. David Politzer (9 times) and the late Physics Nobel Laureate Prof. Richard Feynman (9 times).

Every summer SSPers at the Westmont College campus take behind-the-scenes field trips to both the Caltech campus and nearby Jet Propulsion Lab, operated by Caltech under contract to NASA.

In addition, an agreement is in place for mutual cooperation in other areas, such as student recruiting, faculty recruiting, equipment, alumni affairs, and publicity.

For all of these reasons, it's not surprising that more SSP alumni have gone on to enroll at Caltech than at any college besides MIT -- over 200 so far. Not surprising perhaps, but very impressive, considering that Caltech is not only extremely selective, but also relatively small.

SSP is operated by Summer Science Program, Inc., an independent non-profit 501(c)3 corporation,
in cooperation with New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, the University of Colorado at Boulder, California
Institute of Technology, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sponsors include Lockheed Martin / Sandia National Lab.